


Once more with me

by some_stars



Category: Dark Tower - King
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-12-28
Updated: 2003-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-03 23:28:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/some_stars/pseuds/some_stars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU vignette set (and written) post-<i>Wolves of the Calla</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once more with me

They bury her on clean wet ground, a few dozen yards from where they found her, pretending that matters. Jake cries, Eddie doesn't, and Callahan says the prayers. His voice--for the first time since they've met him--is the voice of an old man. Eddie thinks, _how's that for sanctity of life, you meddling Catholic_ fuck, _how's_\-- But he can't even keep his rage going, not even that. Jake is crying from deep in his chest, and Eddie pulls the boy closer to him, but inside--

Roland stands a ways from the grave, as if he fears he might pollute it. _His eyes were never like mine_, Eddie thinks, the words floating through his head like a forgotten scrap of poetry from a long-ago classroom. For the ages and aeons he's known Roland, now, the gunslinger's eyes have always sparked, like steel bars clanging together. Eddie, oh, Eddie Dean today is without his spark. He rubs Jake's sobbing, shaking body (she was a mother to him, first, wasn't she?) and looks across the clearing at Roland till Callahan's done with his talking to God.

They sleep uncommon close together that night, like pack animals drawing in tight when the wildcats are hunting nearby. Eddie dreams nasty red dreams of the infant thing they killed--_Roland_ killed--and by the way neither Jake nor Callahan can quite meet his eyes the next morning he knows he wasn't the only one.

Roland meets his eyes very well, of course. Eddie doesn't think Roland feels shame anymore. He supposes a thousand years could burn it out of a man. Could burn most anything out of a man.

So they are alike in that way, now. But it takes four weeks of walking (twenty eight days, at least, though who knows how many years each day's been lasting?) for Eddie to corner Roland, if one could dare to use such a word with him, and ask him the question he's been rolling thoughtfully around the empty attic of his skull as they trooped silently through the green.

Early morning, he's figured as the best time for such talk, early enough that the other two will still be asleep. Eddie himself has no trouble rising. He sleeps very lightly these days. The night fog still hangs about the fringes of their camp as he slithers free of Jake's limbs--the boy sleeps like a spider--and into the damp chilly air. Roland sits on a flat rock a few feet away, drinking coffee and holding his free hand over the stone-fire he's built. Somehow Roland makes this activity seem devoid of any indulgence, any sensuous pleasure in the heat. He warms his joints like he oils his guns; a matter of business and duty.

Eddie joins him, stretching out his own, somewhat less angry bones over the hot, dark-red stones. He says his question.

"What did you do after she died?"

Roland answers right away, as if he's been expecting it. (_And sure_, Eddie thinks, _he has_.) "Mostly I walked," he says. "Went to sleep when they put me down, stood up for walking when the sun rose." He flexes his fingers--carefully--then switches hands, giving his half-hand a chance at the heat.

"I figured you'd say something like, you went on searching for the Tower and thought about your father. Something more like your usual bullshit."

"You thought I'd say--"

"Ka," Eddie finishes.

"In time I did." Roland shrugs.

It strikes Eddie that he's seen that gesture from Roland only a handful of times before. It doesn't sit well on his shoulders, the uncertainty of it. Maybe it's the shrug that finally jars Eddie out of his own night fog enough to snarl--his voice so deep and animal he shocks himself--"I won't. I won't ever say that, I won't ever let her disappear like you do," he can't stop himself now, "won't kill her like you did, like you killed _everyone_, christ, Roland, you kill _everyone_\--"

He's got to keep his voice down, he thinks, rocking back and forth as he pulses with a month of grief. He can't wake the others (though Jake must be awake already, but let him pretend he's not, at least) to see him like this. But he can't, he can't, he can't, "I _won't_," he half-sobs half-growls, feeling his lips pull back from his teeth. "I won't do it like you."

"Eddie--" The dry-dust face is blurry with his own unshed tears now, hovering before him like a photograph taken with a shaky hand. And then, suddenly, it's swooping towards him--and then warm coffee breath against his cheek, and the gunslinger says, "Never do. Never do. Eddie--"

For maybe the third, fourth time in his life, Eddie Dean is frozen in shock. He thinks, _Now he'll start to cry, open up about his childhood_\-- But of course no such thing happens. Eddie feels no wetness of tears on his skin, only a dry brush of lips at the height of his cheekbone, hopelessly tender, that astonishes him even more. For a quick and lovely moment he wonders how on earth he'll tell Suze about _this_.

Roland sits back and sips his coffee. "I mostly walked," he says, "and they walked with me."

Eddie nods. He gets it.

He even guesses Roland will, one of these days.

**Author's Note:**

> I am no longer pleased with this (fridging much?? come on, past self), but I try not to delete works without more reason than that. But...yeah. Sorry, everybody.


End file.
